How to read a paper
2026-01-12
Edited: 2026-05-31
Three Pass Approach
Basically, when reading a paper, you should do three passes through it.
First Pass
Should take five to ten minutes: read title, abstract and introduction, read section and subsection headings, read conclusion. As you read, ask
- category: what type of paper is this (what is it about)?
- contrast: which other papers is this related to (what does it build off, does it lead to another paper)?
- correctness: are the assumptions correct?
- contributions: what are the paper's main contributions (main idea / thurst)?
- clarity: is the paper well written
If answering these questions puts the paper in a bad light, you probably should not continue reading it.
Second Pass
Should take about an hour: read everything but proofs, read figures, diagrams, and illustions, mark unread references to read later, write key points and comments as you read.
If the figures and diagrams are of low quality, then that is a bad indication for the paper.
After this, you should understand the main idea of the paper and should be able to summarize it along with supporting evidence.
Third Pass
Try to recreate the paper and comparing your recreation with the papers, that is as you read through the paper in greater detail and doing the following:
- make the same assumptions as the authors
- identify and challenge the assumptions made by the authors
- think of how you would present the idea
This should take about five hours, but at the end you should be able to recreate the entire paper from memory and identify its strong and weak points, this means pointing out implicit assumptions, missing citations, and issues with the experimentation or analysis.